Simmons, Dan - Orphans of the Helix by Simmons Dan

Author:Simmons, Dan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2003-01-15T18:09:29+00:00

"You saw him," said True Voice of the Tree Reta Kasteen a little breathlessly. "Aenea's husband?"

Ces Ambre smiled. "I was fourteen standard years old. It was a long time ago. He was traveling from world to world via farcaster and stayed a few days in my second triune parents' home because he was ill -- a kidney stone -- and then the Pax troopers kept him under arrest until they could send someone to interrogate him. My parents helped him escape. It was a very few days a very many years ago." She smiled again. "And he was not Aenea's husband at that time, remember. He had not taken the sacrament of her DNA, nor even grown aware of what her blood and teachings could do for the human race."

"But you saw him," pressed Chief Branchman Keel Redt.

"Yes. He was in delirium and pain much of the time and handcuffed to my parents' bed by the Pax troopers."

Reta Kasteen leaned closer. "Did he have any sort of ... aura ... about him?"

"Oh, yes," said Ces Ambre with a chuckle. "Until my parents gave him a sponge bath. He had been traveling hard for many days."

The two Ousters and the Templar seemed to sit back in disappointment.

Ces Ambre leaned forward and touched the Templar woman's knee. "I apologize for being flippant -

- I know the important role that Raul Endymion played in all of our history -- but it was long ago, there was much confusion, and at that time on Vitus-Gray-Balianus B I was a rebellious teenager who wanted to leave my community of the Spectrum and accept the cruciform in some nearby Pax city."

The other three visibly leaned back now. The two faces that were readable registered shock.

"You wanted to accept that ... that ... parasite into your body?"

As part of Aenea's Shared Moment, every human everywhere had seen -- had known -- had felt the full gestalt -- of the reality behind the "immortality cruciform" -- a parasitic mass of AI nodes creating a TechnoCore in real space, using the neurons and synapses of each host body in any way it wished, often using it in more creative ways by killing the human host and using the linked neuronic web when it was at its most creative -- during those final seconds of neural dissolution before death. Then the Church would use TechnoCore technology to resurrect the human body with the Core cruciform parasite growing stronger and more networked at each death and resurrection.

Ces Ambre shrugged. "It represented immortality at the time. And a chance to get away from our dusty little village and join the real world -- the Pax."

The three Ouster diplomats could only stare.

Ces Ambre raised her hands to her robe and slipped it open enough to show them the base of her throat and the beginning of a scar where the cruciform had been removed by the Aeneans. "I was kidnapped to one of the remaining Pax worlds and put under the cruciform for nine years," she said so softly that her voice barely carried to the three diplomats.

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